Re: [PLUG] My Holy Quest for a WYSIWYG HTML Word Processor

[Steve Litt via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

Soren Harward via plug said on Mon, 30 Jan 2023 08:35:10 -0500

>On Sat, Jan 28, 2023 at 3:29 PM JP Vossen via plug
><plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>> We've drifted 

[snip]

>On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 7:15 AM Rich Freeman via plug
><plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>> I get what you're saying.  However, it is a bit of a trope on FOSS
>> lists that somebody asks how to do A, and gets 35 replies that don't
>> explain how to do A.  
>
>That's not just a FOSS trope. That's an
>every-moderately-technical-subject trope (viz: StackExchange and
>Reddit). And I totally agree it's a highly desirable feature, not a
>bug, of our communities.
>
>When I was new to Linux as a teenager, the 35 other replies didn't
>just give me the answer, but helped me understand the parameter space
>that the answer existed in. They also helped me understand whether
>"how do I do A?" is even the question I wanted to be asking in the
>first place — it usually wasn't.

Yes. Exactly.

To quote from Eric Raymond and Rick Moen's "How To Ask Questions The
Smart Way":

=====================================================
Often, people who need technical help have a high-level goal in mind
and get stuck on what they think is one particular path towards the
goal. They come for help with the step, but don't realize that the path
is wrong. It can take substantial effort to get past this.

Not so good:
How do I get the color-picker on the FooDraw program to take a
hexadecimal RGB value?

Good:
I'm trying to replace the color table on an image with values of my
choosing. Right now the only way I can see to do this is by editing
each table slot, but I can't get FooDraw's color picker to take a
hexadecimal RGB value.

The second version of the question is smart. It allows an answer that
suggests a tool better suited to the task.
=====================================================

I very slightly modified the quote to remove value judgments that have
no business on a mailing list, but I left the essence intact.

Every English-speaking technologist should read "How To Ask Questions
The Smart Way" at least once a year.

So in this particular case, a better discussion might have started with
"I have to write a lot of static web pages in little time. What are the
best tools?"

Or:

"I have to give a bunch of unsophisticated users a way to write their
own web pages. What tools should I explore? I don't have much time to
train these guys."

Or:

"I don't want the complexity of writing web pages using HTML tags in an
editor. What are some of my other choices?"

Actually, to this last one I would have inquired whether the OP knew
that HTML editing in 2023 is much, much, MUCH easier than it was in
1997, because we have styles using CSS and we have zen-coding editors
now. In all three cases I would have cautioned that if you want a W3C
validated page so that your page renders the same on all capable
browsers, you need direct HTML editing.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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